The Reading
The Summary
Shemuel Bet Chapter 21
The last four chapters of Shemuel Bet are somewhat disjointed, and the chronology of the events depicted therein is not always clear. Many commentaries suggest that some of these events happened earlier in David’s career but, since they are not connected to the main storyline of the book their treatment is saved for the end.
There is a famine in Israel for three consecutive years and David seeks Hashem for an explanation of why it has befallen them. Hashem informs David that the famine is a punishment incurred by Shaul because he massacred the Givonim, decimating their population. The Givonim were a group of Canaanites who joined the Jews in the times of Yehoshua. They pretended not to be inhabitants of the land (who would have to be driven out or destroyed) and convinced Yehoshua to allow them to co-exist with the Jews in Israel.
Apparently, in an incident not described explicitly anywhere in the Hebrew Bible, Shaul attacked and killed many Givonim on some kind of crusade to purify the Jewish people of foreign influences. Although it may have been well-intentioned, it was in direct violation of the solemn oath undertaken by the Jewish people not to harm the Givonim.
The Midrashim attempt to mitigate Shaul’s sin somewhat, claiming that the “destruction” wreaked upon the Givonim was a result of Shaul’s siege on the priestly city of Nov. Since the Givonim were tasked with supplying water and wood to Nov, its destruction put them out of work and therefore “destroyed them”. Alternatively, the Givonim may have been unintentional victims of the strike against Nov.
In either case, these Midrashim do an admirable job of casting Shaul in a positive light, but they do not fit with the literal meaning of the text. Understood simply, the text states that Shaul was inspired by religious fervor and massacred the inhabitants of Givon at some point in his career.
It should not strike us as unusual that this conflict with the Givonim is not mentioned elsewhere in Tanakh. Several examples of Biblical allusions to otherwise unknown historical events can be cited. For instance, when Shaul visits the necromancer at Ein Dor, the text informs us that Shaul had previously initiated a campaign to rid the land of all practitioners of the occult. Had Shaul not himself succumbed to his desire for a consultation with a medium, we would not have any knowledge of the efforts he made earlier in his career to put a stop to such activities. Here, too, we would not know that Shaul had massacred the Givonim if not for the consequences manifest in the days of David.
David understands that only through securing the forgiveness of the Givonim will the Divine wrath be removed from the Jewish people. He approaches the people of Givon and asks them what he can do to correct the wrongs perpetrated by the house of Shaul. They demand seven of the male descendants of Shaul be handed over to them to be hung in retribution for the murders that he committed. David complies with their request, although he spares the life of Mefivoshet in deference to the oath he made to Yonatan to protect his children and preserve his legacy.
The Givonim hang the descendants of Shaul around the beginning the of the barley harvest, in the spring, and leave their corpses exposed during the rainy season. The mother of two of the victims, Ritzpah bat Aya, mourns and stands guard over them in the field, protecting their bodies from the elements as well as from wild beasts. When David hears about this, he arranges for the bones of Shaul and Yonatan to be retrieved from Yavesh Gilead and for the remains of those killed by the Givonim to be collected and interred in their ancestral burial plot. After all of this, the famine ends.
The chapter concludes with a description of several heroic battles waged by the men of David against various Pelishti giants. These accounts give us a sense of the mightiness and skill of David’s entourage of fighters. We are also told of a point in time where David no longer had the physical energy to contend on the battlefield and was nearly killed; after this, his soldiers insisted that he no longer join them in combat.
The contrast emphasized here between Shaul and David is noteworthy. Shaul has a reputation for failing to honor his word, even when it is bolstered with an invocation of the name of Hashem. He oftentimes adhered to his own sense of the proper course of action, even when it conflicted with the Divine will, and especially when it conformed to popular sentiment. Shaul’s killing the Givonim transgressed an oath made in the name of Hashem but he rationalized this in view of his “holy purpose” in battling what he believed to be their inappropriate influence on Israel.
David, by contrast, violates his own sense of moral propriety in this chapter in order to honor an oath taken in the name of Hashem and to fulfill His will. David puts Hashem and His reputation ahead of his own political or religious sensibilities and does not allow his subjective feelings, even when they are theologically justifiable, to bias him.
The text comments that the Givonim were not originally Jewish, something that students of the Tanakh already know. The Rabbis tell us that the purpose of mentioning this fact here is to explain why the Givonim acted in such a cruel and heartless fashion, demanding bloody revenge from the house of Shaul for what had been done to them. Jews, the Sages tell us, have compassion and mercy instilled in them and would never have sought to punish the family of Shaul in such a manner.
Of course, this leads us to the further question of what justified killing seven descendants of Shaul for a crime they did not commit. Not only does David fulfill what seems like an outlandish and unjust request from the Givonim, Hashem discontinues the famine shortly after, indicating that these actions were considered proper and were therefore sufficient to quelch the Divine wrath. One possibility, suggested by some of the commentaries, is that the members of the house of Shaul who were punished were actually complicit, on some level, in the deeds of Shaul – they either participated in the massacre, endorsed it or supported it. This makes the story much more reasonable and comprehensible to us.
However, I would like to suggest an alternative possibility. The reason the text emphasizes the non-Jewish background of the Givonim is not in order to explain their demand but in order to explain David’s acquiescence to their demand. Precisely because they were of non-Jewish origin, the Jewish people had to be extremely cautious and go to enormous lengths to avoid any desecration of the name of Hashem. Therefore, despite the fact that the request of the Givonim was essentially unjust and reflected poorly upon them, David felt morally obligated to honor it in order to restore the sanctity of Hashem’s name that had been sullied by the behavior of Shaul toward them.
When dealing with other nations to whom we must serve as mentors and examples of Divine wisdom and justice, the rules of engagement are sometimes more radical than when we are dealing “in house” with fellow Jews. Other nations are not well-schooled in the nuances of law and principle and would not be able to grasp a learned discourse on the legitimacy of punishing the children for the sins of the father. The imperative to demonstrate that justice is the legitimate claim of all of God’s creatures and that sacred oaths in the name of the Almighty are inviolable forced David to take an action that would normally (in a Jewish framework) be unjust. Tragically, this was the only way he could convey to the Givonim that the violation of the oath was addressed and that their grievance received a serious response.